Writers and Editors


Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
~ Mark Twain

"If you don't know where you are going, you might end up someplace else."
~ Yogi Berra

Quick Links

E-mail Pat
About Pat (site host)
Help a reporter out (useful for reporters and for sources)
Bowling 1, Health Care 0 (Elizabeth Edwards' op ed piece, NYT, on the dismal state of the corporate media)
The Onion (if the news is making you sick, try this approach)
Truth-o-meter (St. Pete Times on whether, and how much, Clinton, Obama, and McCain are sticking to the truth)
Fact Check (Annenberg sorts political truths from half-truths)
Telling your life (or family) story
Medical links for smart patients
Contemporary Latin American Short Stories
Blog roll (and other great stuff)


Find Authors

Major writers organizations
(many of them strong on fighting for creators' rights and ethical behavior)

This list is subjective. I want the writer or editor new to a rather large world of specialty organizations to know which organizations are the big ones. That doesn't mean they're the ones that will prove most immediately useful for an individual -- but they tend to have more clout than the others, when it comes to something like a fight over copyright, for example. Let me know if you think one of these organizations doesn't belong here, or if an important organization is missing.

American Society of Journalists & Authors (ASJA, stronger on newspaper and magazine rights than on book rights and stronger right now on marketing than on rights)
Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), strong on getting health care and medical stories right
Authors Guild
(strong on authors rights, negotiating good book contracts, with a legal staff and a board of famous writers that offers some defense against publishers' tendencies to whittle away at writers' rights and share of income)
The Authors Registry
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors,
strong on freedom of the press issues)
National Writers Union
(part of United Auto Workers; easy to join)
PEN America (poets, essayists, and novelists), with an emphasis on world literature
Poets & Writers (PW), with an emphasis on literary writing
Society for Technical Communication (STC)
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI)
Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW)
The Writers' Guild of Great Britain

Allied organizations strong on fighting for creators' rights


American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP, music rights)
American Society of Media Photographers
Creators Network
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, defending freedom in the digital world)
Graphic Artists Guild

Websites, organizations, and other resources

A GREAT READ
Memoirs
Blogs and news round-ups
Books for writers and editors
Book club recommendations
Book news, reviews, reviewers, author interviews, and social networking about books
Narrative nonfiction
Book publishing
Agents and book proposals
Publishing (and e-publishing)
Marketing, promotion, blogs, vidlits, intelligent radio
Shopping, acquiring, swapping, or selling books
Self-publishing
Book Collaboration FAQ
by Sarah Wernick
Communicating and marketing online (Web 2.0, blogs, podcasts, e-zines, survey tools)
So, You Want to Write a Book! by the late great Sarah Wernick
Editors and editing
Style, grammar, word choice, and pronunciation
For editors
Tips on tact and tone
Preface, foreword, or introduction
Ethics, rights, and other issues
Ethics, freedom of the press, and media watchdogs
Copyright, fair use, permissions, work for hire, and other rights issues
General
Getting published (starting out)
GREAT SEARCH LINKS
Fact-finding and fact-checking
Freelancing
Conferences, workshops, and other learning places
Awards, grants, and funds for writers
Job banks and publishing marketplaces
Mastering art, craft, skills (writing, reporting, multimedia)
Writers and creators
Beyond text (adding images, sound, story, humor)
Copywriting, speechwriting, corporate and technical communications and training
Media professionals and allied creative and professional groups
Fiction, literary and commercial (including genre fiction)
Film, drama, and documentaries
Journalism and journalists
Local and regional organizations
Major writers organizations
Memoir, biography, personal and corporate history
Nonfiction
Poetry
Science and medical writing
Specialty writing, from children's books to sportswriting
Groups for writers who specialize in animals, children's books, food, gardens, family history, resumes, sports, travel, Webwriting, and wine (etc.)
Writing (general)

Created by The Authors Guild

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